Monthly Archives: May 2012

The body of Christ, the church, is admonished to “be established in the present truth.” We are to be in a stable walk with God that is called “the present truth.”

But what is this “present truth”? To find the answer, we have to go back to Pilate’s question, “What is truth?”

Of course, the answer to that question was looking back at Pilate. The Son of God said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” He is the “Word made flesh” dwelling among us. Truth is expressed in words, and Jesus/Yahshua is the living Word, the living expression of God’s thought, “the expressed image of the invisible God.” He is the embodiment of the expression of the will and Word/Logos of God. He is the truth. He is “full of grace and truth, and we are to be established in “the present truth.” We are to be stable in Him, the Truth, and we are to be stable in Him in the present–right now.

Since Christ is the truth, then how are we to be established in Him presently–right now? We arrive at spiritual stability right now by faith. For it is all by faith, by belief. But the word “faith” is one of those worn-out words that mean so many different things to people that its original meaning is lost.

“Now faith is…” Can we believe right now what He said without first seeing the evidence of its ultimate fruition? Can we believe His words when He said, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world” (Matt. 28: 20). His Spirit is with us though we cannot see it, for it operates like the wind which leaves behind evidence of its presence.

You can feel your skin cool as the wind breathes across your face. You can see the leaves murmur and quiver at its presence. So it is at this very moment with the Spirit–Him. He is breathing in and even through us. Yet we cannot see Him, for He is an invisible Spirit with great power to move things like the wind. “I am with you always,” He said. It takes faith to walk in this knowledge.

Faith of our Father Abraham

But how does His faith work? That’s right. It is His faith, not ours, that He has given us to work with. When we come to some knowledge of the truth, we must “reckon” it so, or count it as done. We should have confidence in doing this, for it is His word that we are reckoning done.

For the scripture says, “And Abraham believed God, and it was accounted unto him for righteousness.” In other words, our father of the faith believed what God said to him concerning having a son through Sarah–against all odds–and God considered Abraham righteous in His eyes because he believed Him when He said that Sarah, his elderly and barren wife, would have a son.

Abraham had to reckon it so–even though what God had promised was against everything that his five senses told him. When God told him to sacrifice this miracle son Isaac a few years later, Abraham could have questioned God saying, “Wait a minute, God. You promised that through Isaac I would have countless heirs. If I kill him, that will be impossible, and your word will not come to pass.” He could have used human reasoning, “leaning unto his own understanding.”

So what was in Abraham’s heart that led him to the mountaintop, knife in hand, intent on sacrificing his son Isaac? Was he just another brainwashed religious nut, or did he hold the secret to the very key that unlocks all the spiritual mysteries and riches of God?

He had the secret to faith, and it is this: He believed that since God had told him to sacrifice Isaac, even though he did not understand it, God would evidently raise up Isaac from the dead after the sacrifice was completed. For God had previously said that “in Isaac shall thy seed be called.” God had said that through his son Isaac, his seed would be innumerable as the stars of the heaven. “And he believed in the LORD/Yahweh; and He counted it to him for righteousness” (Gen. 15: 5-6; Rom. 4: 3).

Abraham believed God, “who quickens the dead, and calls those things that be not as though they were” (Rom. 4: 17).

Now, now, this same righteousness, this same state of being right with God, is ours–by the same faith that Abraham exhibited “if we believe on Him that raised up Jesus/Yahshua from the dead” (4: 24).

For we are the ones now in Isaac’s place, “presenting our bodies a living sacrifice.” And by believing that God will raise us up from the dead after we take our sinful hearts to the cross and let them die there with Christ, we can “walk in a newness of life” with His invisible Spirit as our heartbeat. We can walk in a righteous state like the patriarchs and prophets and apostles did centuries ago. By faith. By calling “those things that be not as though they were.”

This is how we will “be established in the present truth.” This is how we will please God. For “without faith it is impossible to please Him.”

We start out in His walk by believing in His resurrection in us. But believing for our new heart is just the beginning. As His Spirit grows in us, we will eventually believe God for the big one: We will look “for a city, whose builder and maker is God”–just like Abraham believed Him and looked for that same city. And that is the New Jerusalem, the literal heavenly city that will sit down on the exact spot on the earth–on the very land that God promised to our father Abraham!

“Believest thou this?” Kenneth Wayne Hancock [For much more on this, check out my books which you can find at the top of this page. Just click “Ebook…”]

President Obama needs to stick to his socialist platitudes at his many fundraisers and not be invoking the name of Jesus to justify his approval of gay marriage. For he has proven that he “neither knows the scriptures nor the power of God.”

He’s even got the audacity to say that if we don’t approve of gay marriage, we don’t love our neighbor (gays) as our selves. He quotes the golden rule, from Jesus’ own lips: “Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” And then he stops there, taking it out of context. There is a colon with a clause coming after this, explaining it: “For this is the law and the prophets” (Matt. 7: 12).

But the great commandment before “love your neighbor as yourself” is this: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matt. 22: 37-40).

The first and great commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. That means “casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (II Cor. 10: 5). How do we love God this way? “For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments” (I John 5: 3). Since Christ is the expressed image of the invisible God, what are His thoughts concerning marriage?

And so to love God and then love our neighbor, we must obey what He commands us to do. Jesus Christ said that he always kept his Father’s commandments. So let’s explore what the Word says about marriage, and let’s obey it. In so doing we prove that we love God and then we can love our neighbor.

God’s thoughts on marriage

Jesus said, “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Mark 10-6-9).

Jesus is giving us in this teaching a definite direction to follow when it comes to marriage. First, God made us humans “male and female.” And a man shall “cleave to his wife” and be one flesh. God created human beings with two genders for a specific purpose. And it was not so that two men could get together, nor two women. But “God has joined together” the male and the female to be one flesh. And Jesus caps off this with this command: What God has “joined together, let not man put asunder,” or man better not separate what I have joined together. When a man persists in mating with another man, is he not separating himself from a woman, which is contrary to what “God has joined together”?

Now those are Jesus’ own words in everyone’s Bible at home. They are very clear and succinct. They are easy to understand. It is God’s purpose and plan to have male and female be joined together in marriage. God has done this since the beginning, and Jesus says that God does not want man to separate what He has joined together. When male joins together with male, and when female joins together with female, they are separating or putting asunder what God has joined together.

Gays are human beings–people with rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. However, according to the Scriptures of Truth, “holy matrimony” or marriage is a spiritual and physical joining together by God of a male and female. These two become one and are the only two human beings that “God hath joined together” scripturally. God has not changed His position on this. He did say, “I am the same yesterday, today, and forever; I change not.”

Marriage between male and female is a moral right granted by the Creator. It was never granted to those of the same sex. President Obama is trying to forge gay marriage into a civil right, erroneously basing it as a moral or inalienable right. “That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” According to the Declaration of Independence, it is the Creator that gives the moral or unalienable rights to mankind. The Creator ordained marriage to a male and female.

This male/female spiritual union is in the internal genetic fabric of human society with roots going back thousands of years, planted there by a purposeful Creator. That is the reason that “gay marriage” was rejected, first by the Creator and now by the people thirty-two states. It doesn’t set well in the human heart and psyche because it never was part of the divine plan, according to the scriptures.

I do say this in love: Because of His male/female plan for marriage, the God of the Bible rejects homosexuality in the strongest of terms [See Genesis 19 and Romans 1: 26-27. I am not going to go on about these rather obvious passages depicting God’s disgust of homosexuality. People can read it for themselves, and come to their own decisions. “Many shall be purified, and made white…But the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand” (Dan. 12: 10).]

But I do not condemn anyone. I believe that loving our neighbor is telling him the truth of God–in this case, the truth concerning what God’s institution of marriage is. Mankind did not create marriage, according to Jesus. Marriage is a spiritual thing, a religious institution, created by God. And we first need to keep His commandments concerning marriage, thereby showing our love for God.

For this gay marriage controversy is not a political thing, or a sociological thing, or a cultural thing. It is a spiritual thing. And it is this: Do we believe that the God of the Bible, the Creator, really exists? If He does, then are we going to love and obey Him concerning marriage and other things? Or are we going to act as if He does not exist, and thumb our noses at Him by approving homosexual marriage? That’s the real spiritual issue before us. Who will take God’s side in this issue? Our choice will define us in His eyes. For “the eyes of the LORD search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (II Chron. 16: 9). KWH

God is searching for His people in these latter days. Granted, He loves the whole world and everyone in it, but there is only one people on the face of this big wide earth that He is actually searching for. It is the people He chose way back in Abraham’s day, who would be called by Abraham’s grandson’s name—Israel, meaning “Prince with God.” Yes, salvation is open to all of His creation, but He has “not cast away His people which He foreknew.” He is searching for them now. To understand His heart and the importance that His people have in His plan for our day, we must rehearse their trail through Bible history.

You know the story about His chosen people—how Yahweh the Creator chose out a people to reveal Himself to and through—a people who came out of the loins of Adam and Eve about 6,000 years ago, a special creation with a special purpose in the mind of God. How Abraham and Sarah were promised a miracle son in the book of Genesis—how he would be called Isaac, and he would have Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel. And Jacob/Israel had 12 sons, and they multiplied and remained the chosen people of God.

And then for most people it gets fuzzy. Most remember a few “Bible stories.” Few study the Bible in depth to see where the thread of prophecy leads. The 12 sons married and multiplied into small clans or tribes. Jacob/Israel’s favorite son Joseph was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. Famine gripped the land and Jacob/Israel and his 11 sons and their families had to go down to Egypt to buy food. In the mean time, Joseph had by the miraculous hand of God become the governor of Egypt, Pharaoh’s right hand man.

Joseph, a type of the Messiah, has mercy on his brothers and their families, forgiving them and setting them up. The Hebrews then stay in Egypt and have it good there and grow over the next 400 years to 3 million, a country within a country. In the course of time, these 12 tribes of people, all the offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel, are enslaved by the Egyptians. Moses, a Hebrew child reared as an Egyptian prince by Pharaoh’s sister, is called by Yahweh to deliver the children of Israel (all 12 tribes). Through many miracles like the parting of the Red Sea, Moses leads God’s people into the Promised Land, into the land of Canaan.

After much adventure and misadventure, Joshua, Moses’ protégé, leads them on in, and they conquer the land. Each of the 12 tribes gets an inheritance of actual real estate and they take up residence.

Their form of government is a theocracy—God ruling them through His representatives, the prophets and the judges. They are, however, extremely unruly, and seek after other gods and provoke Yahweh to anger and jealousy. When things go bad for them, they cry out to Yahweh and He comes to their rescue. When things are good, food and prosperity plentiful, then they forget Him and, what He calls, “whore after other gods.” He likens them to His wife.

This goes on for about 500 years, from about 1500 B.C. to 1,000 B.C. At this time they want to be like the other nations around them; they want a king like they have. And so, against Samuel the prophet’s warning, God gives them King Saul, who is later deposed for His sins, and then has Samuel anoint “a man after God’s own heart,” the illustrious David, the son of Jesse, the ancestor of Jesus/Yahshua.

Later, David’s son Solomon is crowned King of Israel, meaning he is the king of all twelve tribes of Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel. Solomon was a great man, but his kingdom would be torn in two because of His idolatry. For he “loved many strange women…of the nations concerning which Yahweh said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go into them…” (I Kings 11: 1-2). So God told Solomon that because you have done this, “I will surely rend the kingdom from thee” (v. 11). For David’s sake, Yahweh waited until after Solomon’s death to divide the 12 tribed kingdom.

In about 975 B. C., a civil war broke out and it split into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Israel with ten of the twelve tribes, and the Kingdom of Judah with the other two tribes. The Kingdom of Israel (10 tribes) lay to the north with its capital Samaria. The Kingdom of Judah lay to the south with its capital Jerusalem. They both had their own kings, with their own religious and political systems. In fact, one can read about them at war with each other in many parts of the Bible.

Yahweh warned them that He would punish them for their evil ways going back hundreds of years. And really nothing changed after the split. Both Houses, both the House of Israel (10 tribes) and the House of Judah (2 tribes), kept doing evil in God’s sight over the next 300+ years. They kept breaking His 10 commandment law. Yet He was faithful, sending prophets to both kingdoms, admonishing them to turn from their evil ways.

Until, finally, Yahweh had had enough. For His chosen people’s own good, He would do the unthinkable. He would scatter them to the four winds. He would raise up terrible nations to sweep down upon their little kingdoms, and to gobble them up and slay some of them and to lead them into captivity. He had warned them through His prophets of this very detestable thing, yet they would not hearken. Prophets like Elijah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, among many others cried unto them, reminding them of the great heritage, and warning them to repent and turn their hearts back to God, but they would not hear of it. They were smug in their assurance that their new way of worship was proper. But they had other gods before the true Creator God, and had forgotten the Rock “from which they were hewn.”

And so, in 721 B. C., the fierce Assyrian Empire swooped down upon the northern Kingdom of Israel (ten tribes) and led them back east to their capital city of Nineveh. And these enslaved offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel became lost. They lost their identity as part of God’s chosen people. They disappeared into the mists of time, and modern scholars are hard pressed to shed light on just where they went or what happened to them. But “God has not cast away His people which He foreknew” (Rom. 11: 2).

They are mentioned in the “New Testament,” however. Christ said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel” (Matt. 15: 24, NIV, ESV, RSV). He spoke no idle words. The lost tribes of Israel are extremely important to Christ, and consequently, to the Father. And the apostle James addresses his book “to the twelve tribes scattered abroad, greeting” (1:1). That has to be the descendants of the Kingdom of Israel (ten tribes) or to the whole House of Israel (12 tribes). James, who had the same mind of Christ, cleared that up by writing to the 12 tribes that were already scattered all over the world. Also, the apostle Paul said that as of A.D. 62, the twelve tribes were not only in the earth, but were “instantly serving God day and night” in hope of the promise of the resurrection of Christ (Acts 26: 6-7).

Kingdom of Judah Carried Away

That same fate that happened unto the northern Kingdom of Israel (10 Tribes) happened to the southern Kingdom of Judah around 603 B. C. by the Babylonians. Citizens of this two-tribed kingdom, by now called “Jews,” were carried away captive, but they did not lose their identity. The original Hebrew religion instituted by Moses had by now changed into the beginning of the modern religion of Judaism, which, according to the Savior Yahshua, was hypocritical, evil, and was not pleasing to God (John 8:44). By 29 A.D. many Edomites (Idumaens) had converted to the Mosaic religion and had changed it into something altogether repulsive to Christ. In fact, He told them, “You are of your father the devil.” Judaism had become now the religion of the “serpents” and “vipers,” the Pharisees and Sadducees, who are the progenitors of the modern Jewish religion today. This is the “synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie,” spoken of by Jesus/Yahshua Himself (Rev. 3: 9). 85% of modern Jewry are not from the loins of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Arthur Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe).

Because the Israelites (10 tribes) were lost to history, people now think that the only Israelites left are Jews. But the true Jews made up only two tribes out of the original twelve. That leaves the vast majority of the “lost sheep of the House of Israel” out here in the world, their identity lost, waiting for God to reveal it to them. For these of the lost ten tribes do figure prominently in prophecy for these latter days. 144,000 of them are detailed specifically in Revelation 7 and 14. 12, 000 from each tribe are mentioned by name. “Of the tribe of Judah were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Reuben were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Gad…” and on through Benjamin “were sealed twelve thousand,” to a total of 144,000. So a remnant of the lost tribes will be revealed in these latter days in order to fulfill these scriptures.

The 144,000 from the Lost Tribes of Israel

These have a very precious and wonderful calling, for they will be sealed by God as His servants before His throne (7: 3, 15). They will have “their Father’s name [Yahweh] written in their foreheads” (14: 1). They were “redeemed from among men,” meaning that they are not super heavenly entities, but came from the loins of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They were washed in the Lamb’s blood like every other Christian, but they have grown to full spiritual maturity and are the “firstfruits unto God” (v. 4). They are “without fault before the throne of God” (v. 5). Without fault! Perfectly mature manifested sons of the living God!

And they come out of the twelve tribes of Israel. That may not be politically correct to say, but that is what Revelation 7 says. This is the reason that it is extremely important for us to study the prophecies concerning the “lost sheep of the House of Israel” out. Christ said that He was sent to them! It was important to Him. Is it important to us?

Some doubters will say that the 12 tribes are lost, and “What difference does it really make anyway?” Well, it would not make any difference if the future of His chosen people did not matter to Him. God says that His manifested sons will come out of these twelve tribes, and it does matter to Him. He said, “My ways are not your ways; my thoughts are not your thoughts.”

We are told to seek the mind of God. Know His thoughts. What is He thinking about? Is He still thinking about His people, the lost sheep of the House of Israel? Yes. “Has God cast away His people? God forbid…The gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Romans 11:1, 29). Yahweh called them and a remnant of them will come back to Him in these latter days. The question for us is this: Are we one of them? Will we be one of the “firstfruits of God” who are very close to the Lamb and do the greater works that He promised some would do?

Kenneth Wayne Hancock {Please make a comment. I would love to hear from you and where you reside in the earth.}

Many followers of Christ lightly throw around the idea of “getting the Holy Spirit.” We are talking about the very essence of God here and who He is, and they are wanting “It” right now–even making a spectacle of themselves, splayed out in front of the whole church house, with some preacher “slaying them in the Spirit” with a magical slap of his hand on their forehead.

Do they really think that God can be manufactured like that with a few tawdry carnival tricks? Besides, pagan societies have been “slaying in the spirit” for thousands of years in their heathen rites. The anthropologist Sir James Frazer lines it all out in his classic 1922 volume The Golden Bough, one of the Great Books of the Western World (http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/frazer/index.htm).

People are wanting the Spirit of God, however, and that is a good thing. But “you cannot put new wine into old wineskins.” This is the crux of a parable that Christ was teaching. And we must remember that a parable reveals “a mystery kept secret from the foundation of the world” (Matt. 13: 10-11).

The “new wine into old wineskins” parable is found in Luke 5: 36-39:

“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved” (NKJV).

The mystery revealed here is that the new wine is the Holy Spirit of God that He desires to place within us. But first the old wineskin, which is the old heart or old Adamic nature that we are born with–it must be replaced with a new heart, a new nature. This new heart is the new wineskin.

People must realize that God will not place His Spirit into an old heart. Through the prophet Ezekiel, God promised us a new heart: “Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit…I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you” (18: 31; 36: 26). Notice that before He gives us a new heart, we must first get rid of all our transgressions. This means the new heart will come only after a full and final repentance from sin.

This repentance from sin is done at the cross. We must experience the cross in a spiritual way in our own hearts. We must deliberately place our old sinful self on the cross with Christ, acknowledging that this is the only way that God has provided for us to rid ourselves of the sin “that so easily besets us.” We are immersed into His death, for our sins were placed upon Him as the Sin Sacrifice for us, and when He died, our sins died. And when He arose from the dead, we arose with Him. This all, of course, is done by faith in His resurrection. This is when He grants our new heart (https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/conversations-with-the-seer-heirs-of-god-and-joint-heirs-with-christ/).

It is ironic that this cross experience is the first thing out of the mouth of Christ and His apostles, and it is never taught in the churches. Oh, the preachers will mention the cross and how He suffered, but they will never encourage their flock to identify with the Sin Sacrifice and give up their lives of sin. Christ came preaching, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” His apostles taught the same thing (Romans 6: 6; Hebrews 6: 1; Rev 2: 5, just to name a few).

Getting rid of the old heart through the cross experience is essential in putting to death the old heart, which is the old wineskin. It must go, once and for all time, never to be resurrected again.

Expounding on this experience is “the preaching of the cross,” which is the power of God (I Cor. 1: 18). But teaching a man that he has to die is not a welcomed message.

But that is exactly what the early apostles taught. Some would call this teaching absolute “foolishness.” You can’t just go up to some unsuspecting person and tell them that their old spirit and way of doing things has to die. That is foolishness, they would say. But “it pleased God that by the foolishness of preaching [the cross experience] to save them that believe (1: 20).

Paul went on to say that he preached “Christ crucified,” which is “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1: 23).

The power of God? The power of God for what–to do what? The power from God to grow! To grow up into His sons and daughters. “But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to becoome the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name” (John 1: 12).

First, we have to receive Him, His Spirit. But He will not give us His Spirit to co-exist in the old wineskin of the old sinful heart. It first must die on the cross with Christ. Then we can receive His Spirit, and then He will give us the power to become the sons of God.

Paul continually taught this (Col. 2: 12-13). He knew that this was the key to unlock future growth in His Spirit.

So, what happened to the great start 2, 000 years ago? Satan, of course, knows the plan and began right away to insure that Christ’s followers believe the lie that God is not able to change them from sinners to saints. And through this deception, many cannot grow spiritually, for they cannot receive Him and then receive power to be His children.

No wonder Christ said, “O ye of little faith.” Is anything too hard for Him that created billions of galaxies? That’s galaxies–not stars!

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

{One other thought: The new wineskin will in its ultimate fulfillment be our new spiritual bodies promised us upon Christ’s return (I Cor. 15: 42-55) }